Collecting South Africa

Sources For Collecting South African Coinage

After more than 20 years of work as numismatic market analyst for the Standard Catalog of World Coins series, one bit of advice I can surely give budding collectors is: educate yourself before spending your money. In the old days, we used to say, "Buy the book before the coin", which was good advice, but in todays fast paced world you can do so much more.

For instance, if you want to begin collecting South African coins, you can start by learning about the home market. Check out the South African auction site Bid or Buy and see how they do the eBay thing on their home turf. Bid or Buy has nearly 3,500 listings in their coin catagory as of this posting and most sellers will ship to Europe and the United States. Take time to view the SA Mint site and see what they are producing today. Check around the Internet and see what South Africa has to offer in the way of coin knowledge, specialty references, websites and blogs.

Then see what the Australian, European and U.S. markets are up to. Check out Noble Numismatics auctions, as they often have South African coins and medals in their sales. Take a look at the Dix Noonan Webb auction site, where the South African proof sets I mentioned in my last posting are being sold today. Get on the mailing list or check out the World Coin News ads for Dennis Gill, the Garden City, NY coin dealer who has over 80 classic South African coins for sale on his latest price list.

Of course, using a Standard Catalog, DVD or the NumisMaster website, is a fine grounded base to start from, but knowledge is not a single celled creature, it is always growing and evolving. We have many experts who help us to grow the Standard Catalog of World Coins and NumisMaster and if you seek to gain knowledge of your own, perhaps some day you will be one of those experts too.